Perhaps 10 percent of all digital marketing campaigns are truly good, and are more innovative or creative than all the rest. Some of the other 90 percent are effective -- but many are ordinary and certainly don't push boundaries.
You are ambitious. You want your work to get into the top ten. Of course digital marketing campaigns are supposed to deliver results for brands and companies. But also remember, whether you are a marketer, or at an agency, tech solutions provider or research house, the digital campaigns you work on are also about YOU -- how you will win awards, get promoted, make more money, and even become famous (at least in your own little world). So, how do you get your digital work to rise to into the top ten percent? Here are seven tips to get there:
- Make sure the "man bites the dog." Take the ordinary and the expected and flip it 180 degrees in a surprising way. Do something that is routine in the offline world and bring it online with a twist, such as a dog show with user-contributed videos or a treasure hunt that involves avatars, SMS and flash mobs.
- Break something. Get so many responses that the internet crashes. Make grown men cry. Get citizen action groups crying out for a boycott. Examples: Janet Jackson's Super Bowl fashion disaster and the Burger King Sacrifice promotion in which you could win a Whopper for deleting ten friends.
- Go for big concepts. In Hollywood, when they pitch scripts to producers, they say things like "Think Die Hard Meets Pretty Woman in Space." Your campaigns should work the same way.
- Don't include celebrities in your campaigns -- make your celebrities. This is also known as the "Charlie Bit My Finger" tip (the most viewed video on YouTube).
- Get a third party to discover and celebrate your work. Don't launch your campaigns with self-congratulatory bangs -- let an influential blogger stumble on your stuff, or hope WIRED magazine spots you as a trend. But walk the line carefully -- if you do absolutely nothing you will go un-noticed, but if you seed interest clumsily, you will be banished as a manipulative, egotistical wannabe (not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say).
- Start with a great idea, not a great way to use technology. There is a lot of cool stuff out there to play with, but the best campaigns are based on an off-beat idea, a customer insight, or a way to start or join a conversation. No outstanding online marketing campaign ever started out with a bunch of guys in suits saying, "Let's do some kind of viral video to get jiggy with today's youth."
- Execute your campaign on a really, really large scale. China is a good place to start, but the US or Europe or Facebook will do. Can you get 10 million people to download your application, or 900,000 people to complete your survey, or 350,000 people to enter your competition? Either make or spend (or both) a lot of money on your campaign.
And there is a special prize for anyone who can think of three more good tips because wouldn't a list of 10 ways to get into the top ten be better than seven ideas? Submissions to david.ketchum@bitecommunications.com or post them in the iMedia comments box.
David Ketchum is president of Bite Communications, Asia Pacific.
